This paper draws on longitudinal birth cohort data for Britain to analyse participation in learning activities by people in their 30s and 40s. People in this age group have received less attention than either young adults or people in retirement. Yet technical change and the need for new skills make it important for them to engage in learning to…

Statistics is a core subject in the psychology undergraduate curriculum and is often associated with increased anxiety among learners. The aim of this study was to identify factors relating to statistics anxiety, and specifically, how prior experiences in mathematics and A-Level science qualifications may influence students' perceptions as they…

In the UK, psychology degrees are designed to equip students with skills such as critical thinking, research methods, and analytical debate. Many of the key skills and subject-specific content that is taught in the first year of a psychology programme is also introduced in A-level and AS-level study of psychology. Therefore, one would expect…

Psychology students often feel anxious about learning statistics, which can impact their performance. However, little research has explored statistics confidence, which may be an important way to reduce the negative connotations of associating statistics with anxiety. We aimed to explore whether modifying an existing measure of statistics anxiety…

In the UK, students who want to progress to higher education have a number of possible pathways at age 16. The most common of these is traditional, academic focussed, 'A' levels, but increasingly students are taking alternative qualifications (e.g. BTECs, IB, Pre-U). The focus of this research is to infer which (if any) of these qualifications are…

Background: In separate studies and research from different perspectives, five factors are found to be among those related to higher quality outcomes of student learning (academic achievement). Those factors are higher self-efficacy, deeper approaches to learning, higher quality teaching, students' perceptions that their workload is appropriate,…

Background: UK-trained medical students and doctors from minority ethnic groups underperform academically. It is unclear why this problem exists, which makes it dif?cult to know how to address it. Aim: To investigate whether demographic and psychological factors mediate the relationship between ethnicity and ?nal examination scores. Sample: Two…

The Self-Efficacy for Musical Learning questionnaire was adapted and tested with 404 primary school children, producing a robust Cronbach alpha (0.87) and confirming a single underlying factor through exploratory factor analysis. Test-retest scores showed the measure's stability over a 9-month period. Data were collected on children's prior music…

The research findings presented in this paper illustrate how the "value added" of schooling can be assessed empirically using cross-sectional data. Application of the regression-discontinuity approach within a multilevel framework produces both an estimate of the absolute effect of 1 year schooling and an estimate of the variation across…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…